


A Grander Sense

by fabrega



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18401102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: In which David has a realization:oh my god, they'd almost sold the town.





	A Grander Sense

**Author's Note:**

> I watched all four seasons that Netflix has available and immediately had to write this. Thanks so much to kathalcyon and zaphodthebb for looking this over for me and providing the help it needed. ♥

"Oh, my god." David sits bolt upright in bed. 

Under her pillow, Alexis groans. "David! Some of us are trying to sleep!"

"We almost sold the town!"

"What? When?"

David leans back on an elbow, obviously not willing or able to go back to sleep quite yet. "A few years ago? Dad almost sold the town to that creep."

"The one in the coma?"

"Is he still in a coma?" David makes a thoughtful face in the dark. "I don't know, I don't think we ever bothered to check."

Alexis throws an arm over the top of her pillow, groaning into it again. "What is your _point_ , David? Yes, Dad almost sold the town. We were all there, we were all very disappointed."

"If Dad had sold the town, we wouldn't be _here_."

"Here? In this room? At..." Alexis doesn't come out from under the pillow, feeling around blindly on the nightstand for her cell phone and pulling it under the sheets before she checks its screen. "...2:18 in the morning? No, we definitely wouldn't be here. I would be somewhere else, getting some sleep."

"No--well, yes, we wouldn't be here in this room--" David dodges the pillow Alexis lobs at him with a yelp, "--but also we wouldn't be _here_ , in, like, a grander sense."

"What does that even mean, David?"

*

"I would've left Schitt's Creek. I would've gone back to New York."

Johnny and Moira exchange a look of confusion and concern over David's head. It is not a subtle look; luckily, David is seated on the end of their bed, staring somewhere past the far wall instead of paying them any attention. Johnny is pretty sure they're supposed to say something, and so he makes a valiant effort. "Well, yes, that was the plan--"

"I would've gone back to New York, all by myself, and tried to start another gallery."

"And what a magnificent gallery it would have been! You would undoubtedly have been incredibly successful," Moira says, a half-beat too late.

David's eyes narrow as he looks up at her. "Would I? My parents wouldn't be there to buy all the art."

"It would no doubt be a more modest gallery than some of your previous ventures, dear, given your circumstances. With some--" Moira pauses on the word, as if it tastes bad in her mouth, " _budgeting_ , your father and I would certainly have been able to afford a piece or two."

"Not the point!" David makes an angry, dismissive hand gesture. "Not the point at all!"

("You know, we should probably check to see what happened to Andy Roberts, I never did hear if he came out of that coma," Johnny says to Moira.)

"I would be in New York, with a tiny, lonely apartment and a failing gallery and no friends."

"Oh, no," Johnny says. He comes closer to put an awkward hand on David's shoulder, because David looks genuinely distressed now. "Your store isn't failing, and your gallery definitely wouldn't be."

David waits a moment, to see if his father is going to add anything else to that statement. 

Johnny looks to Moira, and she mirrors his panicked look before declaring: "Your efforts in the art world would be a resounding success. Do not doubt it!" She emphasizes each word, as though that will help.

David laughs, a little hysterically. "Thank you both, that's incredibly reassuring and assuages _all_ of my worries."

"Well, you're welcome--"

" _No_." David cuts Johnny off. "Rose Apothecary is successful because I knew that I had to do the work, and because--oh my god. Oh my _god_."

Moira and Johnny look at each other again. "What now?"

*

"If we'd sold the town, if I'd moved to New York, I wouldn't have ever met Patrick."

Stevie finally sets her book down on the counter. She'd been trying so hard to just ignore whatever's going on here, but David doesn't seem to be letting up. "And that's why you're here, bothering me, instead of at your actual job?"

"I wouldn't have a job to go to here." David gives her a scathing look from his seat on the sofa. "I'd be in New York, and Rose Apothecary would be Christmas World, and the general taste levels of this town would be _considerably_ lower."

" _I_ would still have a job here, though, and _you_ wouldn't be sitting here in my lobby, so I don't know, sounds like a good thing to me."

"Rude!" David rolls his eyes. "And no, neither one of us would be here in the lobby of the Rosebud Motel, because it wouldn't _be_ the Rosebud Motel. It would still be the Schitt's Creek Motel. You would've sold it when your aunt died, and you wouldn't be here."

"I'd have moved away to the big city," Stevie drawls, her voice and expression absolutely deadpan.

David's face lights up. "New York?" His expression falls when Stevie shakes her head, and he half-whispers his next guess: "...Elmdale?"

"I was looking at places in Hamilton," Stevie admits.

"Okay, so you'd be wherever it was you were going--"

"...Hamilton."

David continues like Stevie hadn't interrupted him. "And I'd be in New York."

"If I'm remembering right, you stole Roland's truck and got halfway there."

David sits forward on the sofa. "Do you have any idea where New York City is? Like, relative to here? I didn't make it anywhere _close_ to halfway there."

"Sorry, our geography classes only covered places we were likely to go. Like Elmdale."

"That seems like it's doing you an extreme disservice," David starts, but he stops when Stevie finally starts to laugh. "Oh, you're kidding. Okay. Thanks."

Stevie gives him a tight-lipped smile and picks her book up again. "I'm sorry I'm not taking your crisis seriously, David, but it's not a crisis, it's a hypothetical."

*

"I _know_ it didn't happen, but I would've moved to New York and I never would've met you and we wouldn't have this, and--"

Patrick comes around the counter to put his hands on David's shoulders. "But you did meet me."

"Yes, but what if I hadn't?"

"But you did," Patrick repeats. "And even if you had moved away, you'd be fine, David. New York City is a big place, and I bet you would've met somebody _almost_ as charming and handsome as I am."

"Doubtful," David says, his lips twisting into a smile, "But I do appreciate your attempts to console me."

Patrick laughs. "You'd be doing something great, and you'd be great at it."

"See, part of me wants to agree with you--"

"You should, because I'm right."

"--and part of me has grown enough as a person to know that who I was back then would not have been successful at the things I wanted to do. Especially not without you."

Patrick smiles a sort of thoughtful half-smile; whether he's impressed by David's self-awareness or amused by the idea that this is David _after_ the personal growth, it's impossible to tell. He steps in closer, clasps his hands behind David's neck and kisses him once before pulling back far enough to look at him. "Well then, it's a good thing that you didn't sell the town."

"That's not really the point." David huffs a sigh.

"Okay, so what is the point? I could do a much better job consoling you if I knew what exactly it is you're upset about."

"It's just--we came _this close_ to moving away from here, before any of the best things in my life could happen to me. And I never would've known. I wouldn't have known. I would've thought I'd gotten what I wanted."

"And you can't stand being wrong, even in your hypothetical nightmare scenario?"

"Yes, that's exactly what this is about, I'm so glad you figured it out." David rolls his eyes.

Patrick ignores his sarcasm and kisses him. "Glad I could help."

David lets himself be kissed several more times before interjecting, "In my 'hypothetical nightmare scenario', you might have gotten back together with your fiancee."

"I didn't say it wasn't also my hypothetical nightmare scenario." Patrick kisses him again. "You know, you really ought to stop worrying about this. Everything worked out okay, didn't it?"

*

"If you had the chance to leave now, would you?"

Alexis answers immediately, doesn't even lift her head from whatever it is that she's doing at her desk. "No."

David looks taken aback. "Wow, you want to think about it for a minute?"

"I don't need to." Alexis looks over at him now; her gaze is piercing. "And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't need to either."

David opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again, looking away. She's not wrong. 

This place, horrifying as it had seemed at first, feels more like home than anywhere else that David has ever lived. He has friends here, and a boyfriend--who he _loves_! and is actually willing to tell that!--and his family even feels more like a family here than they ever had before. Hell, he and Alexis have spent more time in the same room in the last few years than they had on the same continent in the decade before that.

There's no amount of money somebody could give him for the town now that would make him give all that up.

"You're right," he says aloud, smiling to himself. God, how had he ever thought that he could leave?

"Of course I'm right, David," Alexis says with a proud smirk. "I _am_ a college graduate...which I wouldn't be, if we'd sold the town and I'd gone to St. Barts with my friends instead of staying here."

"Lord knows which consulate you'd have me sending temporary passports to by now," David says. He's glad Alexis laughs. 

He's glad they're both here.


End file.
